


Forget the Answers, Give Me the Questions

by Medie



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-22 22:43:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"People like to pretend we've outgrown dreaming, but we haven't. We want all the answers, but we need the mystery too." He hands her back the book (a tale of two cities) and smiles. "Just remember to give them some and you'll be fine."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forget the Answers, Give Me the Questions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cornerofmadness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cornerofmadness/gifts).



Like so many others, Amanda grows up a Starfleet brat. 

Raised beneath the red skies of Mars, she spends hours on her back beneath the dome, watching the flickering lights of warp trails and starships as they bring the galaxy to her door. 

By the time she's six, she's fluent in Vulcan, Andorian, and knows all the best Tellarite insults. The shipyards bring in a Klingon to consult on engine design and he starts teaching her one of the easier dialects. She spends hours hunched over a padd, working on the word lists he gives her until they fall from her lips so smoothly it surprises even him. 

She loves it. It's the kind of fun that's usually reserved for working on engines with her parents, but Amanda doesn't tell them that. She just smiles and runs off to N'Vek with a question.

It's okay. She thinks that, maybe, they know anyway.

*

When she's seven, they start taking her to work with them. She's ahead in all her classes and bored, a problem for her teachers. A couple of the Vulcans start teaching her in their spare time, keeping her busy while her parents work. 

They assign her reading and its hard, harder than any other books she's ever read and Amanda loves it. She curls up in the ready room of her parents latest project (a new Ambassador-class ship) with her blanket and her padd, and works her way through it a chapter at a time. 

She barely notices time pass. Not until her parents come to get her every evening. 

It's always hard to get her to stop reading, but once they do, Amanda's full of questions. Mom's been splitting her time between the ship and a new design for Starfleet. She can't, won't, say much, but when she does, Amanda's fascinated. 

She always asks when they'll build it. When she'll get to see. This time, she gets an answer.

Her mother shakes her head.

"Not anytime soon. It'll replace the Ambassador class some day, but the old girl's got some life left in her yet. Sovereign'll just have to be patient." 

It's the first time she's heard that name, Sovereign, and Amanda likes the way it sounds.

She rolls it around in her mouth and smiles.

It'll do.

*

She's twelve when a legend comes home to dinner. 

Admiral Leonard McCoy is old, older than anybody she's ever met before, and more alive than any of them. Two seconds through the door and he spots Amanda with the too-long legs she has yet to grow into and glasses because she can't take that shot for her eyes.

She grabs her padd, ready to jump to her feet and greet him, but the Admiral waves her off with a snort and a shake of his head at the device in her hand. 

"Read a book once and a while, kid," he says, sitting down. "Sometimes, you need the feel of one in your hand."

Amanda smiles.

Just wait until he sees her room.

*

Admiral McCoy's working on a new sickbay design and hates transporters. That means he spends months and months at the shipyard, hanging over the shoulders of the designers, watching everything they do. 

It's the most fun Amanda's ever had. She soaks it up like a sponge. McCoy's always talking. He tells stories about everything and anything, making it sound like he's complaining, but always with a twinkle in his eye. 

Once, just before he leaves, he walks in to find Amanda surrounded by her books. Her glasses are on the bridge of her nose and she's completely absorbed.

She doesn't notice at first, but when she does, she looks up to find him watching her with the saddest look on his face.

Before she can ask, he just smiles and pats her on the head. "You reminded me of someone, is all." He eases down beside her, picking up one of the books and says, "You keep this up and they'll try and make a legend out of you."

She almost giggles, but he's _serious_ and so she just stares.

"People like to pretend we've outgrown dreaming, but we haven't. We want all the answers, but we need the mystery too." He hands her back the book (a tale of two cities) and smiles. "Just remember to give them some and you'll be fine."

*

When she's seventeen, she tries for the Academy. One of her mom's friends sponsors her and she gets in on her second try. 

It's the first time she's been to Earth and she just doesn't understand all the fuss. It's nice, but she misses Mars and the Shipyards. She runs when she isn't reading and gets a job at the Klingon embassy to brush up on her accent.

She knows the staff watch her. They watch everybody, but the Admiral's words are never far from her mind. It's not the first time in her career she'll hear such a comparison, but it's the only time she doesn't mind.

*

She gets the Farragut right out of the Academy. Her roommate is a Bolian named D'Challa and she snores. 

Amanda likes to joke that's really why she got promoted so fast.

She needed to get a good night's sleep.

*

Sometimes, it all gets lost in the grind. They chart this sector and that, they make nice with the Klingons at Sherman's planet, and stop an asteroid from destroying a Deltan settlement. Amanda makes herself focus on learning the rhythms of a ship, reading the dispatches from Earth, and making everyone around her shake their heads in dismay.

It's not until she transfers to the Lexington and meets the admiral's granddaughter that someone makes her understand.

"Here," Cait says, dumping a book in Amanda's lap. It's a Dixon Hill novel and a first edition. "Grandpa says relax. If you stroke out before you make captain, he loses a hundred credits to Spock." 

Amanda doesn't believe it until she opens the book and a slip of paper falls out. It's an old-fashioned prescription with 'relax' written in McCoy's shaky scrawl. When she turns it over, she bursts out laughing.

'That's an order, Commander. You get yourself killed. I've gotta pay money to that pointy-earned bastard and he'll never let me hear the end of it. Now, read a chapter then be a dear and ask my granddaughter to dance. She's been mooning over you for months'.

"I'll kill him," Cait mutters, reading over her shoulder. 

Amanda snorts out a laugh. "At this point, I think he's too damn stubborn to die."

*

As it turns out, so is she. The _Yamaguchi_ is an Ambassador class. Her favorite. The captain's experienced, the crew seasoned, and taking the XO's job is a good career move.

Six months on the job and the galaxy goes to hell. Wolf 359 is a goddamn disaster. Amanda watches her captain fall in the first wave, the cubed ship slicing through everything the fleet throws against it. 

It's as close to helpless as she's ever felt and she stumbles to the chair, aware of everyone's eyes on her.

The ship is damaged, barely functional, but they have families aboard and she'll be damned if she lets the aliens have a single one of them. 

Amanda sets her jaw and looks at the bridge crew. "All right," she says, hearing the resignation in her voice, "Whatever we've got, let's make it count." 

*

He's right. They do try and make a legend out of her. She pretends not to notice and goes on with business.

Ten thousand dead, thirty nine ships lost, and the potential for more; she can't begrudge them a few dreams. 

They pin medals on her chest, she eats up the subspace news cycle for a few months, and Starfleet gives her the _Yamaguchi_. That, more than anything, makes it real. 

Captain Ziering sounds strange to her ears, but with the _Yamaguchi_ in dry dock, she's got time to get used to it. 

Amanda picks her crew, visits her family, and tries not to go out of her mind.

She nearly sobs with relief when she sees a familiar figure picking his way up the walk.

"Hell of a first time out of the gate, kiddo," McCoy drawls, sitting on the porch. "What've you got in mind for an encore?"

She sits down beside him and shakes her head. "Damned if I know."

He pats her knee and smiles. "As good a place to start as any I suppose."


End file.
